last update issues

[nunomatos]

Hi there
yesterday i've updated the V-ray version and I found some issues that I want to report because in older versions it works:
- c4d layer - the layer mask is not working (C4D_layer.JPG)
- the material preview still painful to work. i really prefer to turn off the preview in the preferences... any news about this or any workaround solution? the nodesystem material preview works really well and more smoth...
- the instances or render instances of cosmos objects or proxies, when placed manually in the scene, if they are many instances or render instances, it become impossible and takes ages to start to render... if we use clone multi instances, even having much more clones, it starts almost instantly ... this is know?
- creating proxies from personal objects it's really strange and i takes ages to create. even after creating a proxy object the materials don't pass... did you saw the post here? https://forums.chaos.com/forum/v-ray...ings-and-ideas

thanks for the updates
best regards
nuno

[akos_kiss]

Hi!
We ran into similar issues with 2 of these

1. The standard material preview for not node based materials is really bogging down the system. Especially on opening.
2. the layer mask is sometimes working but sometimes not working. it's a gamble. this is really strange though :/

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Hi nunomatos, thanks for the feedback - we are constantly trying to improve the workflow and this information will be considered for future improvements. In particular:

- c4d layer - the layer mask is not working

The Cinema 4D layer shader differs from the V-Ray internal implementation, whereas V-Ray does not allow multiple mask layers, but only one mask per layer. That is why using the V-Ray layer shader is preferred, because it will always have the expected results.

- the material preview still painful to work. i really prefer to turn off the preview in the preferences... any news about this or any workaround solution? the nodesystem material preview works really well and more smoth...

The classic material preview and the node material preview systems use entirely different Cinema 4D APIs. The API for classic material previews is quite old and very limiting in terms of interactivity, which makes improvements there very hard to implement. We are still going to try and improve them for future versions, but it may not be possible to achieve much better interactiveness.

- the instances or render instances of cosmos objects or proxies, when placed manually in the scene, if they are many instances or render instances, it become impossible and takes ages to start to render... if we use clone multi instances, even having much more clones, it starts almost instantly ... this is know?

The standard and render instances are inherently slow, because of their implementation in Cinema 4D itself. The first option is almost identical to copying the object manually. Since this is a Cinema 4D limitation, I'm afraid there isn't much we can improve there. This is the reason Maxon introduced the multi-instances mode, which does not make neither a copy of the object nor a direct instance, which makes it very fast to process. This really should be the preferred cloner mode if many instances are required. We will still look into this to see if there is something we have missed, but I strongly suggest using the multi-instance mode when a lot of instances are necessary.

- creating proxies from personal objects it's really strange and i takes ages to create. even after creating a proxy object the materials don't pass...

Could you elaborate a bit more on this subject? What exactly is strange/confusing and may be improved? The proxy (vrmesh) objects do not contain information about materials, only for polygon selections - storing materials can be achieved via exporting a vrscene file.
Note that we will be adding an option in the vrmesh export to choose whether material assignments or direct polygon selection will be stored in future versions.

Thanks again for your feedback and I hope we can improve the workflow of the items you pointed out.

[akos_kiss]

Hi deyan.hadzhiev

Hi nunomatos,

The classic material preview and the node material preview systems use entirely different Cinema 4D APIs. The API for classic material previews is quite old and very limiting in terms of interactivity, which makes improvements there very hard to implement. We are still going to try and improve them for future versions, but it may not be possible to achieve much better interactiveness.

.

I feel like the older vray 3.7 material preview was more responsive in a few ways. Of course it had its limitations with certain setups and i'm really happy about the updates that vray 5 has, but it still feels slow.
Regarding the node based system, I feel like there are a bunch of limitations and some things that are not really straightforward or easy to understand, ( ie.: naming of node ports and their documentation). But a simple example is that the ramp node. There are a bunch of setting that are hidden by default, and there are a bunch of inputs that offer no explanation what the values do.
I would also like if all of the c4d shaders where available with the node based materials.

I don't mind if the material preview renders in the background on one thread but it grinds whole c4d to a stand still while doing so. To be honest i don't care if the material preview is totally correct or not because most of the time i edit settings with the interactive rendering on, directly within the scene and not with the material preview.

I know this must be an uphill battle because maxons own nodes and their documentation is written in a terrible way. At least for artists how just want to make something look good...

Btw if anyone has some solid info on the nodes that i'm not aware of pleas let me know

[sirio76]

I agree about the node material limitations, it needs much more work to be useful and get the full potential out of it

[fDim Patrick]

Hi there,

I don't mind if the material preview renders in the background on one thread but it grinds whole c4d to a stand still while doing so. To be honest i don't care if the material preview is totally correct or not because most of the time i edit settings with the interactive rendering on, directly within the scene and not with the material preview.

Thanks akos_kiss for this precise statement on how I also think about that matter. In my opinion, the classic material preview for itself could stay as it is, but only it should't affect the responsiveness of c4d that hard. In my humble experience, this isn't the case with Vray 3.6/3.7 which makes it for us still more usable in production, despite all the great features added in Vray 5. And Vray 3.6/3.7 have to deal with the same C4d API limitations, or am I wrong there?

Thanks and cheers.

[nunomatos]

hello to all thanks for the update on my doubts
deyan.hadzhiev thanks for clarifying all my doubts.
Regarding your points:

- regarding the layer system, i understand and now i use only the V-ray Layered shader
- about the material preview, well in version 3.xxx it works pretty. Well, off course this 5.xx version was totally re-write and i understand that is different now. I really don't care about the material preview and this could be a very small preview or even not super accurate as long we could see what material we are looking for and as long the update preview don't slow all the c4d (this is happening in AMD or Intel or less power machines and super power machines... sometimes is so frustrating that i prefer to turn off the preview in the preferences and all becomes really stable again, but.... all the previews become black...
I've spoke with several friends that are using Corona for C4D (that is now from Chaos) and all the material preview is super smooth and fast updates and very stable, so why don't see how they manage to put working I think also Stefano sirio76 works also with Corona and V-ray and can give a feedback?
- about instances and render instances and multi instances, i understand but again and thinking on V-ray3.7 (because it was my render engine since about 2007(15 years)) they work super fast and starts always instantly I must say that was more or less the same as today's multi instances system... Again i know V-ray 5 is completely different from 3.xxx but maybe worth to speak with stefan or even Maxon to see if there is a way to "paint" manually clones ... Unfortunately Multi instances only works with Mograph or other scatter plugins and you can not control manually the position of the elements... and that's why we use a lot of render instances or instances to place manually where we want... :S Again, and I don't want to make this kind of comparisons but is the render engine more similar to V-ray and now that is a Chaos product, Corona dealing with instances and render instances very well
- regarding creating proxies from this last update I've made, it becomes really fast to create proxies (maybe i was doing somethign wrong) If I find some more struggle creating i'll let you know...

thanks for all the attention on this but we really want that this engine become super in C4D ... i really love the 5.xxx version and all the features associated... well i love V-ray and that's why i never changed...
thanks
best regards
nuno

[sirio76]

Hi Nuno, can you upload a video to see the material preview issue?

[deyan.hadzhiev]

nunomatos upon some investigation, it turned we have overlooked one major problem with the material previews after some optimizations. It is mostly present when using large textures. We will be fixing this as soon as possible. We will still look into the issue with proxy instances.

[deyan.hadzhiev]

We applied the fix for the slow material previews in the latest stable nightly builds. Please check if this helps your workflow with classic materials.

[akos_kiss]

I've tested the new nightly build on s26 with a couple of files that crash last week.

• The file opening times are better
• The Material preview in the atributes tab and in the material editor are pretty fast! It feels like in 3.7
• The material manager is a bit slower. A bunch of my materials (not all of them) where displayed black and only update the preivew when i opened the materi editor of the material. (this could be because i was using r25 and turned of all the material previews when i last opened this file, but it is strange that not all of them are updated just a few. I would also like to add that the ones that updated on opening the file where blend materials and tha different layer materials are the ones that did'nt update)

[nunomatos]

hey guys... really sorry for my late answer, but it's being crazy weeks
I've test the last update and the material preview is way faster, but one thing that i found that turns all even more fast, and this tip, i'll like to thank to Stefan_Laub for this help
1- turn all the import textures to absolute path (image bellow)
2- i found that if I turn off the paths off in the preferences, it becomes really fast. Apparently, C4D still search in the defined paths in the preferences, even we have the textures in the project folder or with absolute path in the materials (that makes no sense to me) this paths should only be used if C4D and V-ray not find a texture... but anyway. this is now working perfectly for me and with this last update, no delay at all so thanks Chaos Team and thanks to Stefan for the tips
best
nuno

[nunomatos]

I've tested the new nightly build on s26 with a couple of files that crash last week.

• The file opening times are better
• The Material preview in the atributes tab and in the material editor are pretty fast! It feels like in 3.7
• The material manager is a bit slower. A bunch of my materials (not all of them) where displayed black and only update the preivew when i opened the materi editor of the material. (this could be because i was using r25 and turned of all the material previews when i last opened this file, but it is strange that not all of them are updated just a few. I would also like to add that the ones that updated on opening the file where blend materials and tha different layer materials are the ones that did'nt update)

Hi akos_kiss

about you're last point, after you open the scene, if you select the black materials preview and hit the render material, they will update without need to open one by one

[akos_kiss]

I wanted to get back to the material preview issues, because I've been having issues again with the latest update and blend materials.
Every time i edit the smallest thing about a blend material c4d noticeably "slows down". Simple materials work fine but blend material is updating really choppy and unpleasent.

Currently i have on single blend material in my scene. A simple plane with a blend material that has 3 elements. Clicking anywhere is laggy. and i can see in the task manager that vray and c4d is using one core all the time. even if i don't touch anything in c4d.

Anyone else having these issues?

[sirio76]

i can see in the task manager that vray and c4d is using one core all the time. even if i don't touch anything in c4d.

Usually this happens when Cinema is looking for missing textures or texture located in several paths.